Officer Greg will get the chance to fire a "Russian slug" loaded with a power bag from the real battleship New Jersey. Be the high point of his entire life....and probably your best performing video for the next 15 years👍 yeah man I'm sure he'd still be your friend after
Can you imagine the raw power unleashed in a single bag though lol nevermind 6 pushing 2700 pounds of american anger...that's a lot of trust placed in the guys at the forge to put it mildly. Not everyday a 12 gauge is made to look like a daisy single pump
i think Ryan explains it very clearly and covers all the relevant points in a non technical way that actually conveys the technical detail that goes into this. And yes no one expects him to remember all the numbers. I have often seen ‘war’ films where they are loading guns and wondered how and why. This video explains it clearly.
I worked as a Chemist at the Naval Ordnance Station, Indian Head MD in the late 60’s. This is where the propellant for the NJ was made. We tested every batch to make sure it was in spec. I got a chance to go to Dahlgren VA. to watch test firing to measure the “force/power”of every batch to make adjustments for range. It was shot at 45 and 0 degrees through wire loops to measure the speed of the projectile. When I got there,they were firing 5” guns and I thought that was unbelievable on how loud they where and how everything shook. Then they put 6 bags of powder into the 16” gun after the shell which weighed about 2200 lb. When that was fired, it made the 5” gun sound like a .22 round in comparison. The noise was deafening and it lifted dirt off the ground everywhere. I also got a chance,with binoculars to watch the 0 degree shot skip down the Potomac like someone skipping a rock. What a day!!
Definitely interesting. I never got to see that. The best thing I saw was the testing of the catapults on the USS Ronald Reagan while it was at Newport News shipyard on fit out. Which was interesting to see.
When he says "tare layer" he's referring to the word _"tare"_ as in the _tare weight_ of the bag. So, tare layer, is the layer of propellent laid on it's side to bring the whole thing to your tare weight. Hope that helps if anyone was wondering!
They would take the tare for the bag off on the scale, zeroing it out before loading the propellant. He explained it had nothing to do with the weight off the bag. What I don't understand is why it's called that when, as he explained it, it didn't have anything to do with the tare and was just extra grains to compensate for small variations in sizes of grains to achieve the correct weight.
@@dickJohnsonpeter Nope.. the "tare" weight is the corrected weight to match the performance of the charge to the ballistic standard. The nitrocellulose propellent will vary in performance from batch to batch. A sample is taken from each batch and burned in a closed vessel of known volume and the pressure curve compared with that of the standard for the propellent type. The actual weight of the charge can them be adjusted to produce the correct energy output for the cartridge.. Eg if the batch is found to be more powerful than the standard, the charge is reduced, if weaker more propellent is added. All the gun calibration data depends on having consistent propellent charges so that the projectile will hit the same range, batch for batch. In practice, a ship will do calibration shoots with each batch of propellent if it can, however in wartime this may not be possible and the guns may have to switch from batch to batch during an engagement without re-calibration. The tare weight system minimises the batch to batch variation...
@@felixthecat265 Thanks that's why I was wondering why they called it Tare when it really isn't. Still though, after they test the propellant they're going to load the bags at equal weight and would take a tare off for the bag weight since that can vary.
@@felixthecat265 Right, but the normal meaning of the word "tare" is the weight of the empty container. So it's not clear why they're using the word "tare" for this completely different concept.
I love Ryan's nonchalant presentations, it's like he turned up for work having forgotten it was video day, I love the laid back approach, a refreshing change from most American TV Presenters, Ryan's approach seems to be listen to the information that's the important bit not what I look like.
@@BattleshipNewJersey Ryan has gotten much better with his presentations as he has gotten more comfortable. I remember how nervous and out of his depth he seemed like a high school freshman having to give a presentation in font of the whole school at the start, but now it's like "Eh, another day of teaching. Lets do this..... in a chilled way."
@@GeneralKenobiSIYE yeah? I never really felt that way, that Ryan came off like that, not nearly to the extent you describe anyway.... either way, he's very enjoyable and downtoearth/chill now-a-days =)
The powder plant in question was near Memphis Tennessee. Early on, my father was called to appear at the draft board and get a pre-induction physical. Because he was one of the few in line who could read and write, they asked him to go first, so the others would have confidence. At the end of the process, he met with a committee of three officers. One turned to the others saying "Looks shaky to me. What do you think?" The other two agreed: "Shaky" Shaky." The officer in charge stamped my father's papers 4F. Apparently he was only one of a couple dozen people in the country who knew the smokeless powder process well enough to run a powder plant. So he led a battalion sized crew of old men, wives, girlfriends and fiances of servicemen for five years. During that time, his crew experienced casualties comparable to a combat battalion.
If your dad is still around, thank him for his service for me. The men and women left on the home front were vital in the war effort and all too often overshadowed by those with more heroic sounding job titles.
@@bobbym6130 A powder plant is a building with three sides made of heavy stone or masonry and the fourth side made of flimsy wood frame so if it blows, you know which direction the blast will take. This was true of the original duPont powder factories along Brandywine creek in Delaware that date back to the American Revolution.
My Father was in charge of a smokeless gunpowder plant during WWII. I inherited some samples including a grain from the battleship Missouri. Relax, I have since disposed of the samples. The reason for the 7 holes was so that as the gunpowder burned, the surface area would remain relatively constant. Burning from the outside would reduce the surface area. Burning from inside each of the 7 holes would increase the surface area. So the two would balance out. An important concern was that the burn would finish just as the round left the end of the barrel. This served to avoid wasting powder and it also served to reduce the size of the muzzle flash.
Perhaps I focus on local history too much, but I saw “smokeless gunpowder plant” and thought of Hercules Powder Company in Kenvil, NJ. I know that it blew sky high in September 1940, it killed 51 and it was suspected that the local Bundists did some sabotage.
There was also the Hercules plant just outside of Wilmington, Delaware. Actually, it's still there, though I don't know if they still make anything on-site any longer.
This is known as progressive burning powder and is used in a very much smaller version in sporting and military small arms. You want the powder to burn in such a manner that it provides consistent pressure while the projectile is being pushed down the barrel. Any unburned powder is wasteful and does nothing for velocity. Conversely, if the powder is burned before the projectile leaves the barrel, then pressure drops and the projectile will have a reduced velocity as it exits.
Richard Knouse, I was a 16 inch gunner on the Missouri back in the 1980's, rear turret center gun. I was also LPO of powder flats and powder magazines. We had a powder bag break open on the powder flats. Somewhere around the house I still have a Cheetos with powder grains from that broken bag.
As flame speeds go, that's not all that fast. Once you get to really energetic explosives, even the best high-speed cameras struggle to catch more than a frame. And that's before you get to nuclear reactions...
I used to make gun cotton in the chem lab in HS. Sure, it was crude stuff but it worked! In the open air you could lite it and it would just burn with a rather large flare up. Never tried a contained burn... wasn't that stupid! lol Oh... just remembered that one day the chem teacher came in and asked what I was doing... told him... he just looked at the stuff I had on the lab table and walked away muttering! He was a kewl dude!
Other than basic training I did my entire Army tour in a field artillery battery, a year of that in Viet Nam. It was an 8"/175mm battery so had separate loading ammunition. Powder grains look to be similar in size but our had larger holes, IIRC. I tried burning a few grains to heat up C rations but the fire was too intense and short lived. Our powder increments came packed in one round cans with 6 increments of white bag and 3 of green bag, with only the base increment having the red igniter pad. We had a lot of powder increments unused, these disposed of by burning. We lost a jeep and trailer when the burning got out of hand and ignited a trailer full of powder. The 175 mm gun used over 90 lbs of powder as a full charge, which placed a dangerous stress on the tube ( field artillery calls the barrel the "tube") so the gun crew dismounts the piece and a 50 lanyard is used to fire it. Even then we lost a man when a tube ruptured. 300 full charge rounds was the limit for the 175, 6000 rounds for the 8". At one time we were changing 175 tubes every day or so, more often than I changed socks. Thanks for the great presentation, Ryan.
During Gulf War I, they used a bunch of spare tubes to make bunker busters. Just retasked them, filled them with HE, closed the ends, added fins, the bunkers were history. Apparently, the tube was hardened just right to double as a penetrator. Given how the tubes were made, yeah, I buy that one!
The word you were looking for the extremely rapid burning of the propellant grains is Deflagration. In one of the USS Massachusetts videos the gunner's mate said that they recorded the lot numbers of the powder and made an effort to use all the same lot number for each particular gunnery shoot. This was to gather data so they could adjust the fire control solution for the slightly different projectile velocity for each given lot of propellant. As another video idea would be to just do a video on all the different variables that had to be cranked into the fire control computer to achieve the impressive accuracy. Not just range, speed and course of the target, but things like air temperature, wind speed, humidity, and even the ships latitude and longitude to compensate for the rotation of the earth while the shell was in the air.
The use of same batch/lot number for all components of a given load be it small bore rifle to load for a gun on a battleship is important to maximize the deviation of the means to improve shot to shot predictability. I shoot various disciplines of center fire rifle and pistol and the loads for my competition ammo I use brass that only comes from manufacture lot number that I have then check for the same weight, and volumetric capacity, primers from the same lot/batch number, powder from the same lot/batch number and projectiles from the same lot/batch number. Additionally I keep the primers and powder in a very environmentally stable location. My reloading equipment is also in an environmentally stable location and I only load the ammunition that I need for a given match because the components in loaded ammo degrade at a different rate than components stored in bulk. Additionally any time I buy a new supply of components I have to retest my loads and or adjust them to maintain the expected performance of my loads for each load, caliber and firearm I shoot them in.
@@gullreefclub I remember being quite shocked at the difference in volume alone between different lots from the same manufacturer. I do joke about commercial NM vs precision hand loaded, "You can have NM or you can have good". ;)
83.0gr by weight in a 375 H&H. Does anyone else want a couple of those granules of propellant for their reloading bench? Ryan, great job on explaining how gun cotton was manufactured and produced. It was explained simply and clearly enough for the average person to have a fundamental understanding of the process.
I've had good luck using 10.5 grains of Red Dot in the same cartridge, with a cast lead bullet. Able to do 1 MOA consistent, good enough for short range varmit shooting, or just cheap practice. Great cartridge for the big heavy loads of powder, but also good for the easy light ones, as well.
@@kingduckford Tell me about it, I pull my 265gr cast lead back to about 1600ish. Makes for a nice day. Love to see peoples faces when those long cases come out of the rifle. Have a great evening.
I put 232 grains of IMR 5010 behind a Hornady A-Max 750 grain projectile in my 1/2 inch squirrel gun. The best I can do is a 14.2 inch group of 5 at 1000 yards. Some guys do much better.
@@kimmer6 I surrender my Man Card. LOL Figured someone would pipe up with a 50 BMG. Those are some expensive squirrels, aren't the component bullets several dollars apiece?
Nice. You correctly referred to it as gun propellant vs gun powder. Yet more evidence that Ryan has an engineering background. Lots of nitrocellulose and cordite...not much powder ever since cannonballs were phased out.
@@ghost307 Yes ." Tarmac" is English because it was coined by a Mr Macadam. Tarmac became his company and a huge construction and civil engineering business.Asphalt is the correct term.Its the same as calling a vacuum cleaner a Hoover.I started life in heavy construction so got well used to that word.If you want to get very anal it used to known as "Mettaling" a surface.
Yes, except for leaving out a whole lot of washing & stabilization steps. And with a couple of the steps given in the wrong order... Don't try mixing the solvent/plasticizer with unnitrated cellulose and THEN soaking such a mixture with nitric & sulfuric acids at home, kids. Also would not hurt to mention terms like neutral, regressive and progressive burning + explicitly equate those to changes in grain surface area.
I still find it interesting, that Gun Cotton was developed and Gun Powder was still used heavily for so long, until Gun Cotton proved to be the superior propellant. :-P
@@AflacMan13 There were (are!) quite a few guns in use which were not proofed for the new smokeless propellants, people wanted to keep using them... It was quite a while before the majority of civilian weapons were "nitro proofed", militaries HAD to make the switch ASAP to stay viable.
@@Bert2368 You are correct. The ethyl alcohol is added to the nitrocellulose (post nitration, washing, stabilizing) as a solvent to enable incorporation of other elements of the propellant and then extrusion of the propellant grains.
Now, as a longtime fan of Forgotten Weapons, now that you've talked about the Powder and the Shells - does that mean next weeks video will be you taking it out to the range and shooting it? (P.S. the correct answer is 'yes')
Sounds like a roadtrip to U.S. Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division is in order. Actually, a video showing Dahlgren's display of naval guns would be pretty interesting.
ES(extreme spread) and SD(standard deviation) are super critical in Long Range shooting. I work up loads with both in the single digits. This builds consistent impact points at the target. Barring wind and shooter error.
Well, with the amount of propellant used in a battleship shot, any variance in the rate of burning between different individual pellets gets normalized. There’s a lot more powder being burned, so any little differences between each individual pellet just get averaged out. Whereas in a small arm round, there’s much less powder for those differences to be averaged out over. Plus you’ve also got to consider that these battleship powder bags were probably stored in very good conditions over the 60 years it probably sat in storage. I’m sure the Navy kept them in a climate controlled bunker somewhere, and even on the ship, the powder magazines were kept cool and dry. Compare that to rifle or handgun cartridges, which usually get tossed into 120 degree storage containers and trucks and left there for a while during shipping.
Also, when you're trying to hit moving targets at 20 miles, firing from another moving platform, *any* variations in velocity mean a *lot* of dispersion at the far end. All efforts were undertaken to eliminate every source and form of induced variation.
I watched her shoot just north of DA Nang one night. What a show---horizon flash, three red dots overhead to land, rumble from the guns then the landing rumble. I was aboard ship so we saw it all and what a sight it was!
Never saw that at night, but did see it a couple of times off VN in daylight. I did see both heavy cruisers (8") and light cruisers (6" RF) doing GFS at night. The light cruiser was close inshore in the fog. Made a heck of a show!
During Desert Storm when the Mighty Mo was firing I could hear her guns talking away. Not sure what they was firing at. But remember that after about 3 days the line of combat had moved forward and our lead M109 created a large sand dunes and fell in a HUGE crater that was when we noticed alot of building had been blown away and our commander told us this crater was from the battle wagon off shore she created this hole it took 3 SNOOPYS (wreckers) to pull the 109 out. Let me tell u that was a big hole sure glad she wasnt shooting at us..
we found these grains on the beach in panama, Howard AFB. All us kids collected them with the sea shell's my sisters used them as salt and pepper shakers when playing house
@Norm Simpson Very true...I used to have my neighbors who were SF give me their pen flares out of their suvival kits...lol Sometimes an M18 or 2.... I was a MB back then as well...
@Norm Simpson Same here...Spent most of my life at Bragg...Got here in 67 and still here in 2021....It's been quite the ride with some of the best people on earth...Other MBs..lol
Thank you for taking on this topic. There are two areas that you missed that I think were very important during WWII. The first was flash suppression for night battles. The British, learned from Jutland, that battleship main batteries could draw attention to themselves, or even light up supporting smaller vessels with flash from the big rifles. The British developed a "low flash" powder and made effective use of it in night engagements. After learning that the Japanese preferred to engage at night at Guadalcanal, there was a scramble for "low flash" propellant by the Americans. It was probably more urgently sought than even to replace the Mark 6 magnetic exploder for torpedoes. What were the changes to propellant that made it "low flash"? What were the sacrifices in performance and shelf life of "low flash" propellants? I have heard that changes in tactics were also made so screening destroyers would not get "flashed" by battleships behind them in night actions like stopping Southern Force at Leyte. Secondly, I have heard that the Japanese used colored smoke trails from battleship salvos to identify it from others in the fleet for correction purposes. How was a smoke trail accomplished? Engineering and chemistry? Did the Americans have similar use of colored smoke? What were the different colors of Iowa and New Jersey at Truk (Operation Hailstone 17 Feb 1944)?
I don't think they emitted trails, just burst as smoke bombs instead of explosives. While unpleasant, these are effectively harmless, and only useful for finding the range. Most navies I believe focused on timing the impacts to tell splashes apart, since it's a non-trivial task to switch between munitions when loading a naval cannon. More importantly, the US and UK were rolling out fire-control radar by WW2, obsoleting the concept.
I read that the Japanese used different color dye packages with their shells so they could tell their splashes apart. Wikipedia has a notation on it for the Kongo-class battlecruisers. "In 1941, dyes were introduced to the IJN. Kongo's shells used red dye, Hiei's black, and Kirishima's blue, while Haruna did not use shell-dyes" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kong%C5%8D_class_battlecruiser Wiki also has a notation for the Iowas: "To distinguish between the rounds fired from different battleships the Iowa class used dye bags which allowed artillery observers to determine which rounds had been fired by which ship. Iowa, New Jersey, Missouri, and Wisconsin were assigned the colors Orange, Blue, Red and Green, respectively" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armament_of_the_Iowa_class_battleship
When the powder bags was being made, they had to use brass sewing needles to close them up. They couldnt use any sewing machines for fear of igniting the powder, but sadly some did. Great work on how they were made. PS I would love to find the numbers for the depot at my home town.
Lol, they did in fact employed anyone including smokers, they just have an area for smoking out side the buildings, and I cant really say what town or city I am from but the Old navel depo is in NE that much I can say. Again its cool to see how they were made instead of hearing it.
@@jeremyperala839 they got searched at the plant the search houses for Indiana army ammo plant was just turned down a few years ago. I remember my gpa talking about them when we drove by
@@llake102 Thought that all the ammo plants here in Nebraska made bombs for Europe.... My Grandfather worked at the Mead plant as an electrical repair man there.
I've always liked the way that Ryan explains things thoroughly, but not loaded down with techno-speak, so as to make things difficult to understand. In particular, this video was very informative and entertaining. Good job.
1:33 In engineering we call it "Incomplete deflagration to detonation transition" (IDDT). It's desirable to have a _FAST_ burn in a gun but definitely not supersonic fast. The largest charge I've personally fired is a .375 H&H, stunningly powerful for a shoulder fired rifle.
I was a Gunners Mate{E-6} on the USCGC Duane, sister ship of the USCGC Taney. So I shot many full service 5'38 rounds. I also have one of the last 2 short charges fired when we decommissioned the Duane in 1985. I was part of the decommissioning crew and we were told to fire the short charges as opposed to turning them in when we off loaded the rest of the ammo.
Fired over our heads in I corps 1969. The sound going overhead was frightening, the results down range were awesome. Always wondered what a high cap round with a proximity fuse (airburst) would have done to any ground target.
Just wanted to comment that you've inspired me to do a warship binge. I've just come back from visiting Patriot's Point (Yorktown and Laffey), USS North Carolina, and USS Wisconsin. Keep up the great work!
When I was on active duty in Uncle Sam's Canoe Club as a Seabee the largest weapon system I got to fire was the M203 attachment to my M-16, it's a little bit smaller physically and the pressures it developed were probably somewhat lower than the 16"/50 cal. All bad jokes aside, I wish you guys would consider putting up a crowd funding site so we can send you on a trip overseas to other floating museums, get a cool private tour with camera crew. It would be fun to physically see the technology progression. My number one suggestion would be the IJN Mikasa in Japan, not only is it the last British built battleship anywhere in the world but it's a pre Dreadnought battleship, so the contrast in what counted as state of the art in its design and manufacture would be awesome. And that doesn't even touch on the cool history the Mikasa as the flagship during the Battle of Tsushima. Just thinking out loud, please give it some thought.
My 2nd grade teacher had an honorable discharge from Uncle Sam's Canoe Club, after he slammed into the hull of a ship he was boarding when it was rolling in somewhat heavy seas. IIRC, he broke both arms, a few ribs, and at least one leg, then fell off the ladder onto his cutter, knocking him out.
Well, he can cross the river to see a few generations prior in the USS Olympia, Dewey's old flagship from the Battle of Manila Bay. She's literally across the Delaware River from the New Jersey. There's also the Becuna, a Balao class submarine on display there.
I’m so glad I stumbled across this video as a child I found a large metal case full of these in the woods and of course I took them home and experimented with them for years how crazy
Back in the 80's, I was dispatched by my company to a US Arsenal in Virginia to commission a new polythene extrusion operation. The extruder was to operate in a unassuming wood shed in the middle of some very ominous looking bunkers and revetments. I was told about some self-controlled cargo carts that I might see operating very slowly on the narrow roadways and to immediately move off the road entirely if I saw one heading my way and turn off my engine and stop all electrical activity or RF emissions. I took this very seriously - it was easy to guess that the cargo carts and bunkers contained things that got very angry if poked. The end use of my product was briefed to be for the 16" gun propellant packages in some otherwise unexplained way but described here at 3:00. Being prior military myself, I did not question the end use or application as I had no need to know. But now I know what I had a part of making. PS: The place was like a well manicured nature park, in fact there were some magnificent bucks wandering around. No hunting was allowed - obviously.
Ryan you are truly an amazing curator. It never ceases to amaze me how you are so descriptive and inclusive in all your presentations. I always lament missing some of them. I was wondering if you ever did one on the manufacturing of the powder bags or where they were manufactured and how. Thanks again you are a joy to us battleship lovers.
The largest charge I've fired was for the M107, 175mm Self Propelled Artillery gun, while in the USMC. The shell weighed 147 pounds and the maximum charge was 58 pounds of bagged powder with a range of 21 miles. The largest shell was from the M110A1, 8" Self Propelled Artillery gun. This shell weighed 200 pounds, but the powder charge was only 50 pounds with a range of 18 miles. Interesting side note, the M110 also had a nuclear shell available for use during the cold war. Our crew had a member that was certified to arm and handle the nuke, that was a special MOS 0812.
The M107 was classified as a gun and the M110 as a howitzer. It has to do with the ballistic profile the projectile travels. As you've noted, the 175mm was longer ranged with a lower weight projectile so it travelled on a flatter trajectory than the 8". The interesting time involving the propellant charges for both of those artillery pieces was disposing of unused charges after a session on the range. I did it once for each type of weapon at Grafenwoehr and the amount of heat generated when it burns is amazing. The red bags are placed at the end so they are the last ones to light off.
@@beeber4516 there were two classes, that size was a gun type, similar to the Hiroshima bomb, albeit with more neutron reflectors. The larger round was a linear implosion, a cousin to the Nakasaki bomb, again with tons of reflectors to make it smaller. Yeah, I used to work on nukes back in prehistory.
Wiki saith we built four dozen such nuclear shells for 16 inch guns. Looks like they were a Pentagon political weapon -- the infighting over which service branch had which part of the nuclear triad. This was however a weapon type in search of a mission... emptying an entire harbor at a shot? Making a new harbor, lickety-split? And all this at nuclear weapon prices and maintenance costs. The projectiles obsolesced and were dismantled.
I have shot many 1 to 1 1/4 pound loads of black powder charges though 2, 12 pound Napoleons and 3/4 to 1 pound loads though 2 different 6 pound civil war era guns, all cast in 1864 in Cincinnati, Ohio while a member of Battery A, 1st Ohio Light Artillery. It was an awesome unit to re-enact with from Columbus, Ohio.
Ryan, your presentation has come a long way!!!! that was/is an excellent explanation.. I was trying to explain grain size and the like to my son ( For my BP cannon) and ill have to admit you have done a better job than my attempt and so therefore his homework is - to watch this episode and then explain propellant grain fundamentals to me!!!! So thanks for helping Charlie boy understand in a way that I know will stick in his head. The whole reason we have kids I think, to teach them stuff!!!!!!! ( so we can then show them they have a long way to go to beat Dad!!!!!!!)
Very well done. I believe they did a shoot into Lebanon on morning news TV once. It was some distance away, the flash, boom reached the camera at different times. I was around middle teens by then. Not much for shooting except a couple of confederate enfields in living history and a few artillery here and there but nothing that would hold up to this level of knowledge and precision present in this wonderful video. I was told by a relative years ago that there was a battleship support off Korea and I have not been able to find much on it. Story goes the ship was shooting at 2000 yards enemy danger close from miles away. The description used by the relative was the sound of manifest high speed boxcar trains of that era rumbling over then the thump with a small pause before the kaboom. Im not much personally, just a old trucker who will die one and frankly followed the artillery in all its forms most of my life and its very good to sit quietly with a coffee pot and soak in this information at this stage in my life. The United States started off with I think DuPont up in the Brandywine Valley near Philly and worked out wards from there. I will share that I witnessed first hand a place near Hawthorne Nevada walker lake once or twice where theres a valley of about 20 miles by 40 if not bigger as the eye can see of storage bunkers maybe 600 yards apart. That at one time in WW2 was the stockpile for the entire Pacific. Ive been told its since closed and no longer in use. So I am the last one to know anything more. I will share that I have been into Remington Arms which is a small arms plant in Arkansas for delivery of Ready Mix Concrete that they would order at one time or another for a little bit here and a little bit there and so on. As they were actively making the powder or propellent in those woods back there I was taught one rule. Red Light stop and stay. Mr Red Light dictates that no one moves until its off for reasons. So... it was a small experience but memorable. Working for Dowdy in Batesville we eventually run Brass Coil Sheets into that plant on the front end docks to be made into small arms rounds. Those brass coils were loaded up in Buffalo NY across from Canada there. There was a foundry there. Its alot of writing for a late night but little tidbits here and there and so on. Aberdeen Ordance Museum had at one time or another a 16 inch naval gun similar if not the same model as the Battleships. So standing in it's tub and consider dealing with it is something. Anzio Annie was something to compare it to. I think they moved it out long ago. Probably to Virginia. I look forward to more of these wonderful videos.
just was reading about the explosion on the Iowa On 19 April 1989, due to a overram of powder bags ."The team determined that the "tare" or "trim" layer (a small amount of powder placed at the end of each bag to equalize the bag's weight, inserted in the mid-1980s when the powder was mixed and rebagged under Miceli's direction) would often ignite when compressed at high speed. Cooper found that the burning fragments did not ignite adjacent powder in the same bag, but instead would burn through the bag material and ignite the adjacent bag's black powder patch and thereby ignite the rest of the bags."
That makes sense, considering the what was heard. Also, the barges they came from apparently had A/C issues. Finally, when not encased in the barrel, those grains become burning shrapnel. Bodies were a mess. 😞
The perforations are to increase the burn rate of the powder. They increase surface area of the grain that is burning. You can tailor also design the perforations to generate a specific pressure curve, depending on the shape and locations of the perforations and how this develops as the propellant burns.
You really communicated your extensive knowledge of the subject well! Even I understood it. Just a little tip from someone whose been in the film and video business for a long time... Get used to looking at the camera lens until you don't think of the glass but of the one guy who is hanging on every word you say. Treat the camera like somebody else just standing there chatting with you. You really need to practice this... it doesn't come easily sometimes, but if you can avoid glancing away from the camera, you'll appear more comfortable and natural. Great work on this amazing ship! Thanks for a great channel!
Dracinifel discussed the efforts at remixing in a video once. The results were less than stellar. It resulted in charges that could vary by 30% from ombre shot to the next. Identical shots had effect variance of as much as 600 meters. Imagine taking the same aim twice and missing the same spot by a quarter mile.
Man! Can you imagine the arms of these men who had to roll or try to pick these things up in a rapid pace during a fight? Must have been some really strong dogs back then. Respect!
Gotta lot of respect that you read the procedure for making nitrocellulose off a card. I'll take correct info over slick presentation any day. Just to clarify though, the perforations in the powder grains allow for even burning after ignition. For example, if there were no perforations and the grain was ignited, the burning would take place over the entire external area of the grain alone releasing an initial amount of gas. As it burns away, however, the area of the cylinder becomes less reducing the amount of gas produced the longer it burns. The perforations provide for the grain to burn inward and outward at the same time so the perforations get wider as they burn just like the outer diameter gets smaller, creating a balanced burning. Generally, powder grains for weapons below 40mm have one perforation down the center while 16-inch gun propellant grains have seven as demonstrated in this video. One ctiticism though, the internal pressure doesn't immediately start to go down as soon as the powder is ignited. The shell is moving down the barrel while the powder is still not all consumed. In fact, a consequence of priming the back of the rear bag means that as pressure is building unburned or still burning powder grains are being pushed up the barrel behind the shell. There is a point at which pressure begins to drop as gas generation can't keep up with the volume of the barrel behind the shell, but it's not immediate. You can find out more about this subject in the 1957 Naval Ordnance and Gunnery Volume I, Chapter 6, Section C _Gun Barrels and Interior Ballistics_ eugeneleeslover.com/US-NAVY-BOOKS/1-NO-10797-A-CHAPTER-6.html
As a teenager (in 1963) I owned and shot a vintage flintlock Charleville musket. I loaded a .64" round ball (+-450 grains) over 190 grains of FFg and each time wondered why I was doing that?? The only recoil mitigation system was my shoulder and it didn't work that well... Thanks for the very detailed description of how the grains were laid in the bag, I would have had not idea! Your videos are always informative and engaging.
In 1967 my next door neighbor would buy 50lb kegs of surplus 20MM powder. He used it for handloading many popular rifle calibers. 3006, 243, 220 swift etc... It would shoot fantastic groups at a few dollars per pound!!
Or go old school and use the Play-Doh extruder he mentioned. Could use old dog turds picked up in the park for the material. Put a coat of shellac on them to keep the stink down and get them on the shelves.
In reading about Iowa class battleships, the literature often mentions "dumped" versus "stacked". I think you explained that the practice rounds were "dumped" while the service rounds were "stacked". The books seemed to have extensive tables of "dumped" and "stacked" with associated ranges and muzzle velocities leading me to believe there were multiple uses for these two terms. So the "dumped" grains are just randomly oriented in a bag, while the "stacked" are aligned end to end. Am I understanding this correctly?
Those holes in the grains do more than ensuring an even burn, they actually cause the powder to burn at an accelerating rate as the projectile gets further down the barrel....in doing so, the pressure in the barrel doesn't drop off as fast as it otherwise would. If the grains didn't have holes, then as the powder burns inward the burning surface area decreases causing a drop in gas release. By putting a single hole in the center, as the outside rate decreases the inside increases and the gas release remains constant. By putting many holes in it, the area inside which is burning increases much faster than the outside decreases, so the burn rate accelerates.
As a precision rifle shooter +/- 5fps is AMAZING. I would have assumed 100fps but thats amazingly tight quality control for the guns/primers/shells/powder
I remember watching another RUclips video on how this stuff was made. The propellant gets extruded in the final step of the process and looks a lot like Tootsie Rolls (except that eating one would definitely be contraindicated).
@hognoxious Correct. Interesting trivia...pool balls were made with nitrocellulose starting in 1869. They switched to Bakelite in 1907 because the billiard balls occasionally blew up.
In the early to mid 80s I remember these shells and powder charges coming through NWS Charleston for S&I. Train car after train car. I was absolutely amazed at the size of these shells and charges.
I know that things don't work this way, but I keep thinking about a low boy trailer carrying a set of Hornady reloading dies, a box car load of Sierra ballistic tip bullets (and the fork lift to move them) and a dump truck full of Hogdon powder. As usual, everybody will be out of stock on the super large super magnum rile primers.
In the turrets, there's a primer man with the specific job of putting the electrically fired primer in the back of the charge before the breech is closed. I understand his station is in the breech space just far enough that the big gun's recoil doesn't reach him. These turrets aren't a big armoed box with gun breeches sticking into them, but divided up into numerous small compartments. Wriggling from one to another is like exploring a cave. Each gun breech has such a space. The largest interior space is the back of the turret where the local-control optical rangefinder lives.
The turret explosion in USS Iowa was during a 5 bag D-846 w/2600lb practice shell experiment. Everything I have read said it was not officially sanctioned by NAVSEA.
Biggest charge you ask? 48 grains of IMR 4064 in a 30-06. Somehow, I suspect one could load a few dozen 30-06 size cartridges with the weight of just one grain from those 16" / 50 charges.
Biggest charge I've ever personally fired is M2/M33 ball .50BMG from a ship-mounted Browning M2 machine gun. Nothing that special, though it *is* a *lot* of fun.
As a Marine Corps machine gunner in the early 80's, the M2 along with the MK19 were my daily toys. As you said, they are not to be compared to the 16" guns, but they still have their place to this date and they still mean business. And yes, they are a hoot to shoot!
I had 2 bolt action target rifles in .50BMG. 1 in 16 barrel twist for both, 30mm Nightforce scopes, Badger 12 bolt scope rings. These were a lot of fun to shoot and to let others including kids to shoot. I hand loaded a thousand plus rounds of fire formed brass, precision primer pockets, special projectiles for 1000 yard use. The muzzle brakes cut the recoil to less than a 12 gage. I fired about 5 rounds out of a 20mm Lahti and that recoil was considerable. Now I do indoor .177 air rifles.
hey, forgive me my (first hand) knowledge of the Navy (and armed forces in general) is severely lacking, but the documentaries I've seen, laaaargely pertaining to the 1800s and before it seems, a "Quartermaster" is someone that worries about supplies and ensuring the troops have all the clothing and rations and weapons and so on that they need... is the term simply used differently in land forces? Thanks so much for your answer.
@@ScumfuckMcDoucheface In the Navy a Quartermaster is an Enlisted navigator. I used to work with Charts, GPS, and Radar. I believe in the Army a "Quartermaster" works in Supply.
I was a Field Artillery Officer in the 90’s and worked primarily on 155mm self propelled howitzers, that is with a tank track vehicle supporting the gun tube. Our ammo was two part, the shells came in a variety of flavors on pallets stacked two high. (High explosive, smoke, DPICM,mines, rocket assist, chemical & white phosphorus). They weighed about 95lb each, just enough that you really had to be very careful, plenty of guys had busted fingers and toes. The powder came in a vacuum sealed tube, 5 increments per tube, each of the bags were sewn together with stringy thread, day to day the powder increments would change color some, I’ve seen them be all white, pale tan & light green. Each of the powder bags different sizes with the largest bag being charge 5, that end go in the breech first. After the projectile. The range on a 155mm was about 19km or 11.8 miles, so in peacetime we would tear off two bags to shoot charge three out to 10km or so. We had a Litton computer called BUCS that allowed the fire direction officer to input powder temp, meteorological data, air temp, altitude at target, the precise 10 digit grids for the observer, canon & target, fusing requested, etc. It would spit out slightly different azimuth & elevation for each gun and could land the rounds in the same square meter, or a square or a circle or what have you. So someone at each gun would set fuses, projectile goes in the breech, the desired powder increments & the breech is shut, gun chief attaches the firing mechanism and a lanyard, and pulls it. Fire direction calls “shot over” to the observer. The gun tube will recoil as much as 55” and it’s awful loud, even through a Kevlar and earplugs, you can feel the concussion and you have to leave your mouth open or you’ll rupture your eardrums. I don’t recall the muzzle velocity but if you don’t blink you get a glimpse of a round departing if you’re standing outside. 15-30 seconds later you get impact or splash. Even 7-9000m away the explosions are pretty impressive.
The pressure peaks and then doesn't drop until the shell leaves the barrel. There is propellant burning the entire time even after the shell leaves the barrel. Thats why there is a large fireball that leaves the gun. Propellant is still burning in the open air. Also the shorter barrel doesnt increase the speed of the shell. The shorter barrels needed a faster burning propellant because it has a shorter amount of time to build pressure while the shell was still in the barrel. A perfect load has its charge fully burnt right ass the shell leaves the barrel. If you burn up to fast you will get a slower round speed also if you burn to slow youll throw some of your load out and get a slower round.
The Royal Navy switched to Cordite N a triple base propellant in WWII by adding Nitroguanidine to Cordite, this reduce muzzle flash and increased barrel life by lowering the temperature of the shot due to the massive amout on nitrogen produce by the Nitroguanidine when heated, some modern artillery still uses this triple base propellant
I read that Yamato’s gun barrels were only rated for about 100 full-charge shots. Every time it shot its guns in anger, it cost 1% of the ship’s useful life.
@@Wyrmnax Well, I found another site that says barrel life 150-250 rounds, but one of the barrels of Musashi may have been rendered inoperative firing a san-shiki anti-aircraft shell on the day it sunk, so there is nothing precise in those figures. Now, what happens at the end of your barrel life? The barrels of the Yamato-class could not be relined. Only 27 guns were commissioned. 9 were installed on Musashi, 9 on Yamato, two were test guns, and 7 more were earmarked for the Shinano but were never completed. A ship like Yamato might have had a nominal 25 mile range on its guns, but it's chance of hitting a maneuvering target over half that distance was less than 1%, at maximum range, probably less than .1%. An American battleship staying inside the range of its radar-directed gunfire but outside of the range where Yamato's gunfire would have a high-enough hitting position to justify the decrease in barrel life could goad the the Yamato into effectively destroying its own combat effectiveness. At the same tonnage as the Yamato, the US could add two cruisers, say a Brooklyn and a Baltimore class. As soon as Yamato concentrates fire on Iowa, Brooklyn and Baltimore advance. When Yamato deems them a threat and engages a cruiser with the main battery, that cruiser makes smoke and withdraws. The cruisers could easily get within the range of their radar-directed guns, and they could start making mincemeat out of Yamato's upper-deck works. www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNJAP_18-45_t94.php
@hognoxious You can change the barrels if there are any, but making barrels for guns this big was really the artistic and highly technical part of the job. They are expensive, and Japan didn't make extras.
Another great vid. The biggest charges I have set off would be 440 grain hardcast projectiles from a S & W 500 as well as some 2 barrel blasts of bird loads from the old SxS 10 gauge.
I was a bit surprised they used silk for the bags. I thought silk was in short supply in WW2. Presumably silk must offer some advantage to be used rather than something cheap like cotton canvas. I wonder what the advantage is?
I would imagine it was in short supply to consumers because the War Department bought it and used it for powder bags and parachutes, not undies and bed sheets.
@@cliffaksw Yeah, silk leaves very little smoldering residue. Rayon and some wools leave more. Cotton leaves a _lot_. Even though the barrel is blown out before the breech is opened, and the gun captain is supposed to stick his head in an visually inspect before loading, it's not something you want around when shoving bags of propellant into the breech.
Learned a lot from this video, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised; giant rifles need giant grains of propellant. The additives to extend barrel life was very cool, I had no idea such a thing even existed. Fascinating! Cheers to you all.
I didn't realize the grains were so big. I've seen the grains used in common rifle cartridges such as .223 or .30-'06 and they look pretty similar except they are tiny. A 2" long grain, yikes!
In my old Field Artillery days, we fired 155mm howitzers (M114 and M198) with both white and green bag charges. I think the green bag weighed about 5-6 pounds and white bag around 13-15 pounds. I never got to mess with the supercharges they came up after I left the FA in mid-1980s.
I have a question, how do you flood a ships powder magazine, I know a lot of ships would do so if they had revived a hit and did not want to risk a magazine explosion, what did that entail? Is it just automatically spraying down the powder bag storage or is the magazine literally filled with water?
Usually, the magazine will have a high-pressure sprinkler system as well as an intake that allows sea water to enter the magazine when activated. Remember most of the propellant is stored in water-tight, air-tight canisters and only a few canisters were opened at one. time. The high-pressure sprinklers should contain most of the fire and cool it down sufficiently that the propellant in the canisters won't ignite before the water coming in from the sea water intake completely floods the compartment. I came across an excerpt from an USN manual on Stowage and Supply of Ammunition from 1917 states that either system should be capable of flooding the magazine within 20 minutes: www.gwpda.org/naval/w04usams.htm
The Biggest charge I have ever fired was 45 grains of 4895 IMR powder made by Dupont back in 1968....30.06 round in a US Model of 1917 Rifle....cheers Ryan.....always love your presentation
71.5 gr of H4831 out of my 300 Win Mag is the largest amount of powder that I personally have used , the scale size of each grain of powder is amazing ! I thought it would be same size as rifle powder , just a Helluva lot more ! I was WRONG ! 😳
For a technical explanation of the Iowa explosion in turret # 2 I recommend reading the book " Explosion aboard the Iowa " by Dr. Richard L. Schwoebel of Sandia National Laboratories . He and his team were hired by the Senate Armed Services Committee to investigate the incident of April 19, 1989 on the Iowa.
“A Glimpse of Hell” is also a good book about the incident. Names all the players and all the nonsense that was going on, as well as the Navy’s refusal to believe the truth. A movie version of the book came out starring James Caan.
Drachinifel has an interview with the captain of the Iowa. In it he talks about exactly how accurate they got. They could put every shell on the grass of a soccer field.
Honestly, I’d have thought it would be more accurate than that. I guess that’s why we use missiles these days though, you can get a guided missile through the window of a building.
As a hand loader "grain" is a unit of weight equal to 1/7000th of a pound (or 15.432 grains per gram) used for measuring powder charge and bullet weight. I can't imagine grains, as a unit of measure, would ever be used for a gun of such scale. However, it still sounds, to my hand loader ears, wrong to use "grain" in that way. (Yes I'm aware of grains of salt, grains of sand and grains of sugar but we don't measure those things in grains as well like we do with powder and bullets) Iwould call each individual piece of smokeless powder a kernel. As far as I'm aware "kernal" is not also a unit if measure. Love the channel! Lots of interesting stuff.
Various propellants, from black powder, on, have both been _weighed_ in grains (at least, smaller charges) and been manufactured in discrete _grains_ (kernels) that were then poured into a bag or cartridge. I agree it can be a bit confusing (see also "caliber").
Same here. One of my cousins was in ordnance at the time. Two problems: the old powder was deteriorated and more sensitive. Because of that more care had to be taken when inserting the bags into the barrel. In the Iowa accident its believed the powder bags were rammed too fast and too hard. Yeh, it was a truly scummy thing the Navy brass did trying to cover up the real cause of the explosion. Scuttlebutt had it that the Iowa officers were trying to do a rate of fire that was unwise with old powder. Navy brass must always find a scapegoat, its a time honored tradition.
I wonder if the navy is currently doing the same thing to the sailor they’re saying burned down the Bonhomme Richard. I’ve heard the evidence against him isn’t very convincing
I’ve begun to wonder why Ryan avoids this topic so seriously? Across several videos where the topic would organically likely come up, he….alludes to it…..but has never really tackled it head on. I suspect it’s part of the Navy agreement. If so, understandable…..but also very unfortunate. That is a story very worthy of being told. Still, great channel Ryan and thanks for efforts!
@@BattleshipNewJersey thanks for the reply. Surprised I had missed that one (and did enjoy it) but…..my original point still stands. The accident itself is known about but the story surrounding the event is something still avoided here. I don’t mean it as a criticism per se, just an observation. I understand that it can be a sensitive topic but I also believe that a lot of hard lessons should have been learned, at least I hope so, and that the navy will be better off for it no matter how many lumps they need to take.
I was on the shell deck of Turret 3, so technically, the most I've ever fired was probably the 330 lb charge. The higher charges were mostly right out of service by the plankowners. Apparently, there was a firing of a 5-charge of D-846 and one D845 and got some more range (and a thorough chewing out of Seaquist by the Navy), but that was before my time and not my turret.
haha hell Yeah, can you imagine? The way troops describe the sound of shells flying overhead already as "freight train like"... just throw a rocket on the end of one... and then...? haha
@@ScumfuckMcDoucheface it would be like the M982 artillery shell. It’s just rocket assisted on the beginning stage before it leaves the barrel. It should sound the same just a whole lot faster.
@@brianalford5754 i dont know the designation you're refferencing but I've heard of rocket assisted shells (and dropped bomb) that use the rocket to navigate and target select well off the gravity assisted ballistic trajectory... totally awesome, for sure.
There have been a number of rocket-assisted shells designed and even used, from WWII onward. They light off at some point _after_ leaving the muzzle. Two big problems: 1) if the shell isn't perfectly aligned when the motor lights (e.g., some wobble) accuracy goes all to hell, and 2) the rocket propellant etc. reduces the amount of bursting charge the shell can carry (more or less fixed volume).
Love the Battleship New Jersey .. The last few years my motorcycle club, in conjunction with Fallen Hero Wreath Program, has ended the day there after completing our run. I'll never get tired of turing this ship ...
Really surprised how large the grains are. Also I didn't expect them to be organized so neatly in the bags.
taofledermaus? I used to watch some of your videos ages ago, I did not know you liked the battleships
I can hear the gears turning. Will it fit in a shotgun? Where can I get a few grains?
Me neither but it makes sense when you think of it as a scaled up rifle.
Officer Greg will get the chance to fire a "Russian slug" loaded with a power bag from the real battleship New Jersey.
Be the high point of his entire life....and probably your best performing video for the next 15 years👍 yeah man I'm sure he'd still be your friend after
Can you imagine the raw power unleashed in a single bag though lol nevermind 6 pushing 2700 pounds of american anger...that's a lot of trust placed in the guys at the forge to put it mildly. Not everyday a 12 gauge is made to look like a daisy single pump
You do a great job, Ryan. Don’t sweat looking at notes occasionally, we don’t expect that you memorize every script. 👍👍👍
Some day they'll upload a blooper reel.
i think Ryan explains it very clearly and covers all the relevant points in a non technical way that actually conveys the technical detail that goes into this. And yes no one expects him to remember all the numbers. I have often seen ‘war’ films where they are loading guns and wondered how and why. This video explains it clearly.
Thanks
Or we could specifically finance a teleprompter.
He shouldn’t have to look at anything there shouldn’t be notes there he should just know it off the top of his head. The world of tanks guy does
I worked as a Chemist at the Naval Ordnance Station, Indian Head MD in the late 60’s. This is where the propellant for the NJ was made. We tested every batch to make sure it was in spec. I got a chance to go to Dahlgren VA. to watch test firing to measure the “force/power”of every batch to make adjustments for range. It was shot at 45 and 0 degrees through wire loops to measure the speed of the projectile. When I got there,they were firing 5” guns and I thought that was unbelievable on how loud they where and how everything shook. Then they put 6 bags of powder into the 16” gun after the shell which weighed about 2200 lb. When that was fired, it made the 5” gun sound like a .22 round in comparison. The noise was deafening and it lifted dirt off the ground everywhere. I also got a chance,with binoculars to watch the 0 degree shot skip down the Potomac like someone skipping a rock. What a day!!
What did you do at work today daddy? Fascinating job,
Definitely interesting. I never got to see that. The best thing I saw was the testing of the catapults on the USS Ronald Reagan while it was at Newport News shipyard on fit out. Which was interesting to see.
When he says "tare layer" he's referring to the word _"tare"_ as in the _tare weight_ of the bag. So, tare layer, is the layer of propellent laid on it's side to bring the whole thing to your tare weight. Hope that helps if anyone was wondering!
It does! I was thinking he meant "tear" like they tore a hole in the charge to shove more in if it didn't weigh correctly.
They would take the tare for the bag off on the scale, zeroing it out before loading the propellant. He explained it had nothing to do with the weight off the bag. What I don't understand is why it's called that when, as he explained it, it didn't have anything to do with the tare and was just extra grains to compensate for small variations in sizes of grains to achieve the correct weight.
@@dickJohnsonpeter Nope.. the "tare" weight is the corrected weight to match the performance of the charge to the ballistic standard. The nitrocellulose propellent will vary in performance from batch to batch. A sample is taken from each batch and burned in a closed vessel of known volume and the pressure curve compared with that of the standard for the propellent type. The actual weight of the charge can them be adjusted to produce the correct energy output for the cartridge.. Eg if the batch is found to be more powerful than the standard, the charge is reduced, if weaker more propellent is added. All the gun calibration data depends on having consistent propellent charges so that the projectile will hit the same range, batch for batch.
In practice, a ship will do calibration shoots with each batch of propellent if it can, however in wartime this may not be possible and the guns may have to switch from batch to batch during an engagement without re-calibration. The tare weight system minimises the batch to batch variation...
@@felixthecat265 Thanks that's why I was wondering why they called it Tare when it really isn't. Still though, after they test the propellant they're going to load the bags at equal weight and would take a tare off for the bag weight since that can vary.
@@felixthecat265 Right, but the normal meaning of the word "tare" is the weight of the empty container. So it's not clear why they're using the word "tare" for this completely different concept.
I love Ryan's nonchalant presentations, it's like he turned up for work having forgotten it was video day, I love the laid back approach, a refreshing change from most American TV Presenters, Ryan's approach seems to be listen to the information that's the important bit not what I look like.
Well said, definitely agree =)
I mean, basically that's what we do. We sit around for a few minutes and bounce ideas, then find a place to film him talk about it
@@BattleshipNewJersey Ryan has gotten much better with his presentations as he has gotten more comfortable. I remember how nervous and out of his depth he seemed like a high school freshman having to give a presentation in font of the whole school at the start, but now it's like "Eh, another day of teaching. Lets do this..... in a chilled way."
@@GeneralKenobiSIYE yeah? I never really felt that way, that Ryan came off like that, not nearly to the extent you describe anyway.... either way, he's very enjoyable and downtoearth/chill now-a-days =)
I like how it's presented. It feels like a bunch of enthusiasts sitting around and geeking out over specifics. It's a rare treat to deep dive topics.
The powder plant in question was near Memphis Tennessee. Early on, my father was called to appear at the draft board and get a pre-induction physical. Because he was one of the few in line who could read and write, they asked him to go first, so the others would have confidence. At the end of the process, he met with a committee of three officers. One turned to the others saying "Looks shaky to me. What do you think?" The other two agreed: "Shaky" Shaky." The officer in charge stamped my father's papers 4F. Apparently he was only one of a couple dozen people in the country who knew the smokeless powder process well enough to run a powder plant. So he led a battalion sized crew of old men, wives, girlfriends and fiances of servicemen for five years. During that time, his crew experienced casualties comparable to a combat battalion.
If your dad is still around, thank him for his service for me. The men and women left on the home front were vital in the war effort and all too often overshadowed by those with more heroic sounding job titles.
Wow. When he described vats of guncotton being mixed i thought that must have been terrifying
@@bobbym6130 A powder plant is a building with three sides made of heavy stone or masonry and the fourth side made of flimsy wood frame so if it blows, you know which direction the blast will take. This was true of the original duPont powder factories along Brandywine creek in Delaware that date back to the American Revolution.
@@Jaybird-vy7oh He passed in 1973.
So no one did the "pop the bag" gag at work i assume....... God bless your dad, he kept some guns rockin on my grandpas destroyer during WW2 i bet...
I was a Marine in Vietnam. I saw her firing off the coast south of Da Nang in '68. The rounds sound like they say. A Railroad train passing overhead.
My Father was in charge of a smokeless gunpowder plant during WWII. I inherited some samples including a grain from the battleship Missouri. Relax, I have since disposed of the samples. The reason for the 7 holes was so that as the gunpowder burned, the surface area would remain relatively constant. Burning from the outside would reduce the surface area. Burning from inside each of the 7 holes would increase the surface area. So the two would balance out. An important concern was that the burn would finish just as the round left the end of the barrel. This served to avoid wasting powder and it also served to reduce the size of the muzzle flash.
Perhaps I focus on local history too much, but I saw “smokeless gunpowder plant” and thought of Hercules Powder Company in Kenvil, NJ. I know that it blew sky high in September 1940, it killed 51 and it was suspected that the local Bundists did some sabotage.
There was also the Hercules plant just outside of Wilmington, Delaware. Actually, it's still there, though I don't know if they still make anything on-site any longer.
This is known as progressive burning powder and is used in a very much smaller version in sporting and military small arms. You want the powder to burn in such a manner that it provides consistent pressure while the projectile is being pushed down the barrel. Any unburned powder is wasteful and does nothing for velocity. Conversely, if the powder is burned before the projectile leaves the barrel, then pressure drops and the projectile will have a reduced velocity as it exits.
Richard Knouse, I was a 16 inch gunner on the Missouri back in the 1980's, rear turret center gun. I was also LPO of powder flats and powder magazines. We had a powder bag break open on the powder flats. Somewhere around the house I still have a Cheetos with powder grains from that broken bag.
What facility ? Most of my grand family worked at inaap in Charlestown Indiana I live a few miles
"as this slowly burns in the blink of an eye" NICE. Loving your vids cheers.
He must be taking lessons from Drach...
As flame speeds go, that's not all that fast. Once you get to really energetic explosives, even the best high-speed cameras struggle to catch more than a frame. And that's before you get to nuclear reactions...
I used to make gun cotton in the chem lab in HS. Sure, it was crude stuff but it worked! In the open air you could lite it and it would just burn with a rather large flare up. Never tried a contained burn... wasn't that stupid! lol Oh... just remembered that one day the chem teacher came in and asked what I was doing... told him... he just looked at the stuff I had on the lab table and walked away muttering! He was a kewl dude!
Other than basic training I did my entire Army tour in a field artillery battery, a year of that in Viet Nam. It was an 8"/175mm battery so had separate loading ammunition. Powder grains look to be similar in size but our had larger holes, IIRC. I tried burning a few grains to heat up C rations but the fire was too intense and short lived. Our powder increments came packed in one round cans with 6 increments of white bag and 3 of green bag, with only the base increment having the red igniter pad. We had a lot of powder increments unused, these disposed of by burning. We lost a jeep and trailer when the burning got out of hand and ignited a trailer full of powder. The 175 mm gun used over 90 lbs of powder as a full charge, which placed a dangerous stress on the tube ( field artillery calls the barrel the "tube") so the gun crew dismounts the piece and a 50 lanyard is used to fire it. Even then we lost a man when a tube ruptured. 300 full charge rounds was the limit for the 175, 6000 rounds for the 8". At one time we were changing 175 tubes every day or so, more often than I changed socks.
Thanks for the great presentation, Ryan.
What was the unit that you were in???
@@albertfat907 7/15th Artillery Regt
Thanks for service ! All my artillery buddies are deaf ,I humped alot of 105 and 4 deuce in support platoon, and damn near went deaf on deliveries.
During Gulf War I, they used a bunch of spare tubes to make bunker busters. Just retasked them, filled them with HE, closed the ends, added fins, the bunkers were history.
Apparently, the tube was hardened just right to double as a penetrator. Given how the tubes were made, yeah, I buy that one!
8"/203mm
I appreciate the fact you bring notes to speak accurately. Thanks for all the hard work you and your team do. This channel is awesome.
Having a specification sheet for those pesky numbers is a good idea.
The word you were looking for the extremely rapid burning of the propellant grains is Deflagration. In one of the USS Massachusetts videos the gunner's mate said that they recorded the lot numbers of the powder and made an effort to use all the same lot number for each particular gunnery shoot. This was to gather data so they could adjust the fire control solution for the slightly different projectile velocity for each given lot of propellant. As another video idea would be to just do a video on all the different variables that had to be cranked into the fire control computer to achieve the impressive accuracy. Not just range, speed and course of the target, but things like air temperature, wind speed, humidity, and even the ships latitude and longitude to compensate for the rotation of the earth while the shell was in the air.
Interesting side note, thanks.
I'd like that.
The use of same batch/lot number for all components of a given load be it small bore rifle to load for a gun on a battleship is important to maximize the deviation of the means to improve shot to shot predictability. I shoot various disciplines of center fire rifle and pistol and the loads for my competition ammo I use brass that only comes from manufacture lot number that I have then check for the same weight, and volumetric capacity, primers from the same lot/batch number, powder from the same lot/batch number and projectiles from the same lot/batch number. Additionally I keep the primers and powder in a very environmentally stable location. My reloading equipment is also in an environmentally stable location and I only load the ammunition that I need for a given match because the components in loaded ammo degrade at a different rate than components stored in bulk. Additionally any time I buy a new supply of components I have to retest my loads and or adjust them to maintain the expected performance of my loads for each load, caliber and firearm I shoot them in.
@@gullreefclub I remember being quite shocked at the difference in volume alone between different lots from the same manufacturer.
I do joke about commercial NM vs precision hand loaded, "You can have NM or you can have good". ;)
83.0gr by weight in a 375 H&H. Does anyone else want a couple of those granules of propellant for their reloading bench? Ryan, great job on explaining how gun cotton was manufactured and produced. It was explained simply and clearly enough for the average person to have a fundamental understanding of the process.
I've had good luck using 10.5 grains of Red Dot in the same cartridge, with a cast lead bullet. Able to do 1 MOA consistent, good enough for short range varmit shooting, or just cheap practice. Great cartridge for the big heavy loads of powder, but also good for the easy light ones, as well.
@@kingduckford Tell me about it, I pull my 265gr cast lead back to about 1600ish. Makes for a nice day. Love to see peoples faces when those long cases come out of the rifle. Have a great evening.
I put 232 grains of IMR 5010 behind a Hornady A-Max 750 grain projectile in my 1/2 inch squirrel gun. The best I can do is a 14.2 inch group of 5 at 1000 yards. Some guys do much better.
@@kimmer6 I surrender my Man Card. LOL Figured someone would pipe up with a 50 BMG. Those are some expensive squirrels, aren't the component bullets several dollars apiece?
@@johnmollet2637 Well there's always the Tankgewehr...
Nice. You correctly referred to it as gun propellant vs gun powder. Yet more evidence that Ryan has an engineering background. Lots of nitrocellulose and cordite...not much powder ever since cannonballs were phased out.
Now if we could only get people to stop using the obsolete word "tarmac" incorrectly.
@@ghost307 oh shut up lol
@@jobdylan5782 haha the man's got a point =P
@Jordan Rodrigues I don't think I know the difference.
@@ghost307 Yes ." Tarmac" is English because it was coined by a Mr Macadam. Tarmac became his company and a huge construction and civil engineering business.Asphalt is the correct term.Its the same as calling a vacuum cleaner a Hoover.I started life in heavy construction so got well used to that word.If you want to get very anal it used to known as "Mettaling" a surface.
This dude is EXTREMELY knowledgeable. He isn't reading off anything, and he has to think sometimes. Very impressive stuff
As a chemist, I love that Ryan nailed all the major points of the chemical production
Yes, except for leaving out a whole lot of washing & stabilization steps. And with a couple of the steps given in the wrong order...
Don't try mixing the solvent/plasticizer with unnitrated cellulose and THEN soaking such a mixture with nitric & sulfuric acids at home, kids.
Also would not hurt to mention terms like neutral, regressive and progressive burning + explicitly equate those to changes in grain surface area.
I still find it interesting, that Gun Cotton was developed and Gun Powder was still used heavily for so long, until Gun Cotton proved to be the superior propellant. :-P
@@AflacMan13
There were (are!) quite a few guns in use which were not proofed for the new smokeless propellants, people wanted to keep using them... It was quite a while before the majority of civilian weapons were "nitro proofed", militaries HAD to make the switch ASAP to stay viable.
@@AflacMan13 Using gun cotton with black powder guns often was ending with the gun chamber exploding into the user face...
@@Bert2368 You are correct. The ethyl alcohol is added to the nitrocellulose (post nitration, washing, stabilizing) as a solvent to enable incorporation of other elements of the propellant and then extrusion of the propellant grains.
Now, as a longtime fan of Forgotten Weapons, now that you've talked about the Powder and the Shells - does that mean next weeks video will be you taking it out to the range and shooting it?
(P.S. the correct answer is 'yes')
Not unless he wants to blow out every window for a couple of miles. That 16 inch battery makes a bit of a pop when fired.
@@Elthenar worthy sacrifices...
Sounds like a roadtrip to U.S. Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division is in order. Actually, a video showing Dahlgren's display of naval guns would be pretty interesting.
@@Elthenar It's New Jersey, would anyone even notice the difference before and after?
@@mikeowen9268 lol
I found this video to be the most interesting one yet. They are all good, but I guess this is where my primary interest lies. Thank you, Ryan.
ES(extreme spread) and SD(standard deviation) are super critical in Long Range shooting. I work up loads with both in the single digits. This builds consistent impact points at the target. Barring wind and shooter error.
5fps+/- on average is incredible, I'd have thought it'd be much more than that since small arm variance is in the double digit range it seems
And some are WAY more than that!
Well, with the amount of propellant used in a battleship shot, any variance in the rate of burning between different individual pellets gets normalized. There’s a lot more powder being burned, so any little differences between each individual pellet just get averaged out. Whereas in a small arm round, there’s much less powder for those differences to be averaged out over.
Plus you’ve also got to consider that these battleship powder bags were probably stored in very good conditions over the 60 years it probably sat in storage. I’m sure the Navy kept them in a climate controlled bunker somewhere, and even on the ship, the powder magazines were kept cool and dry. Compare that to rifle or handgun cartridges, which usually get tossed into 120 degree storage containers and trucks and left there for a while during shipping.
Also, when you're trying to hit moving targets at 20 miles, firing from another moving platform, *any* variations in velocity mean a *lot* of dispersion at the far end. All efforts were undertaken to eliminate every source and form of induced variation.
5 fps variance is not uncommon for rifle shooters
@@squid0013 +/- 5fps in rifles means you're using match-grade ammo. +/- 30fps is much more common.
I watched her shoot just north of DA Nang one night. What a show---horizon flash, three red dots overhead to land, rumble from the guns then the landing rumble. I was aboard ship so we saw it all and what a sight it was!
It must have been glorious... Not being in a war naturally, but the power and majesty of these ships never seem to go away!
Never saw that at night, but did see it a couple of times off VN in daylight. I did see both heavy cruisers (8") and light cruisers (6" RF) doing GFS at night. The light cruiser was close inshore in the fog. Made a heck of a show!
@@ironduff003 Was the CA one of the auto-loaders? They were the Salem, Newport News and Des Moines iirc. Fired a volley about every 6 seconds!
During Desert Storm when the Mighty Mo was firing I could hear her guns talking away. Not sure what they was firing at. But remember that after about 3 days the line of combat had moved forward and our lead M109 created a large sand dunes and fell in a HUGE crater that was when we noticed alot of building had been blown away and our commander told us this crater was from the battle wagon off shore she created this hole it took 3 SNOOPYS (wreckers) to pull the 109 out. Let me tell u that was a big hole sure glad she wasnt shooting at us..
Welcome Home.
we found these grains on the beach in panama, Howard AFB. All us kids collected them with the sea shell's my sisters used them as salt and pepper shakers when playing house
@Norm Simpson I can relate...lol
@Norm Simpson Very true...I used to have my neighbors who were SF give me their pen flares out of their suvival kits...lol Sometimes an M18 or 2....
I was a MB back then as well...
@Norm Simpson Same here...Spent most of my life at Bragg...Got here in 67 and still here in 2021....It's been quite the ride with some of the best people on earth...Other MBs..lol
@Norm Simpson dudes y'all sound like you had fun
I just sit on the computer and drive a prototype Abrams around and do loop the loops in hueys all day
@Norm Simpson My older brother and I did the same. At 66, I'm still playing with cannons and flintlocks. And I STILL have all nine fingers!
Thank you for taking on this topic. There are two areas that you missed that I think were very important during WWII. The first was flash suppression for night battles. The British, learned from Jutland, that battleship main batteries could draw attention to themselves, or even light up supporting smaller vessels with flash from the big rifles. The British developed a "low flash" powder and made effective use of it in night engagements. After learning that the Japanese preferred to engage at night at Guadalcanal, there was a scramble for "low flash" propellant by the Americans. It was probably more urgently sought than even to replace the Mark 6 magnetic exploder for torpedoes. What were the changes to propellant that made it "low flash"? What were the sacrifices in performance and shelf life of "low flash" propellants? I have heard that changes in tactics were also made so screening destroyers would not get "flashed" by battleships behind them in night actions like stopping Southern Force at Leyte.
Secondly, I have heard that the Japanese used colored smoke trails from battleship salvos to identify it from others in the fleet for correction purposes. How was a smoke trail accomplished? Engineering and chemistry? Did the Americans have similar use of colored smoke? What were the different colors of Iowa and New Jersey at Truk (Operation Hailstone 17 Feb 1944)?
Never heard of the colored smoke idea, but it sounds like a good one...
I don't think they emitted trails, just burst as smoke bombs instead of explosives. While unpleasant, these are effectively harmless, and only useful for finding the range. Most navies I believe focused on timing the impacts to tell splashes apart, since it's a non-trivial task to switch between munitions when loading a naval cannon. More importantly, the US and UK were rolling out fire-control radar by WW2, obsoleting the concept.
I read that the Japanese used different color dye packages with their shells so they could tell their splashes apart. Wikipedia has a notation on it for the Kongo-class battlecruisers.
"In 1941, dyes were introduced to the IJN. Kongo's shells used red dye, Hiei's black, and Kirishima's blue, while Haruna did not use shell-dyes"
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kong%C5%8D_class_battlecruiser
Wiki also has a notation for the Iowas:
"To distinguish between the rounds fired from different battleships the Iowa class used dye bags which allowed artillery observers to determine which rounds had been fired by which ship. Iowa, New Jersey, Missouri, and Wisconsin were assigned the colors Orange, Blue, Red and Green, respectively"
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armament_of_the_Iowa_class_battleship
Thank you Ryan. Great explanation!
When the powder bags was being made, they had to use brass sewing needles to close them up. They couldnt use any sewing machines for fear of igniting the powder, but sadly some did. Great work on how they were made. PS I would love to find the numbers for the depot at my home town.
They probably only employed non-smokers, too. They were pretty hard to find in the 1940's.
Say where that is and someone may be able to find out
Lol, they did in fact employed anyone including smokers, they just have an area for smoking out side the buildings, and I cant really say what town or city I am from but the Old navel depo is in NE that much I can say. Again its cool to see how they were made instead of hearing it.
@@jeremyperala839 they got searched at the plant the search houses for Indiana army ammo plant was just turned down a few years ago. I remember my gpa talking about them when we drove by
@@llake102 Thought that all the ammo plants here in Nebraska made bombs for Europe.... My Grandfather worked at the Mead plant as an electrical repair man there.
I've always liked the way that Ryan explains things thoroughly, but not loaded down with techno-speak, so as to make things difficult to understand. In particular, this video was very informative and entertaining. Good job.
1:33 In engineering we call it "Incomplete deflagration to detonation transition" (IDDT). It's desirable to have a _FAST_ burn in a gun but definitely not supersonic fast. The largest charge I've personally fired is a .375 H&H, stunningly powerful for a shoulder fired rifle.
Incredibly detailed info. Bravo!
Finally a look inside the bag
......................... you hittin' on me, boy?
I was a Gunners Mate{E-6} on the USCGC Duane, sister ship of the USCGC Taney. So I shot many full service 5'38 rounds. I also have one of the last 2 short charges fired when we decommissioned the Duane in 1985. I was part of the decommissioning crew and we were told to fire the short charges as opposed to turning them in when we off loaded the rest of the ammo.
USCGC Ingram 1965 GM2
Fired over our heads in I corps 1969. The sound going overhead was frightening, the results down range were awesome. Always wondered what a high cap round with a proximity fuse (airburst) would have done to any ground target.
Never saw them do their thing in person, but knowing what artillery of smaller mass does, I suspect they ruined quite a few vacation plans. ;)
Just wanted to comment that you've inspired me to do a warship binge. I've just come back from visiting Patriot's Point (Yorktown and Laffey), USS North Carolina, and USS Wisconsin. Keep up the great work!
The USS North Carolina is a great ship to tour...
When I was on active duty in Uncle Sam's Canoe Club as a Seabee the largest weapon system I got to fire was the M203 attachment to my M-16, it's a little bit smaller physically and the pressures it developed were probably somewhat lower than the 16"/50 cal.
All bad jokes aside, I wish you guys would consider putting up a crowd funding site so we can send you on a trip overseas to other floating museums, get a cool private tour with camera crew. It would be fun to physically see the technology progression. My number one suggestion would be the IJN Mikasa in Japan, not only is it the last British built battleship anywhere in the world but it's a pre Dreadnought battleship, so the contrast in what counted as state of the art in its design and manufacture would be awesome. And that doesn't even touch on the cool history the Mikasa as the flagship during the Battle of Tsushima.
Just thinking out loud, please give it some thought.
M 203 used the high-low pressure system to launch a grenade .. ,so the high start was still low compared to most rifles or a cannon ..
My 2nd grade teacher had an honorable discharge from Uncle Sam's Canoe Club, after he slammed into the hull of a ship he was boarding when it was rolling in somewhat heavy seas. IIRC, he broke both arms, a few ribs, and at least one leg, then fell off the ladder onto his cutter, knocking him out.
Well, he can cross the river to see a few generations prior in the USS Olympia, Dewey's old flagship from the Battle of Manila Bay. She's literally across the Delaware River from the New Jersey. There's also the Becuna, a Balao class submarine on display there.
I’m so glad I stumbled across this video as a child I found a large metal case full of these in the woods and of course I took them home and experimented with them for years how crazy
EXCELLENT JOB, GREAT EXPLANATION OF THE POWDER AND BURN RATE, NOT JUST AN EXPLOSION .
The knowledge that’s in this guys head is quite amazing. He’s kinda like the Jack-of-all-trades of all battleship curators.
Back in the 80's, I was dispatched by my company to a US Arsenal in Virginia to commission a new polythene extrusion operation. The extruder was to operate in a unassuming wood shed in the middle of some very ominous looking bunkers and revetments. I was told about some self-controlled cargo carts that I might see operating very slowly on the narrow roadways and to immediately move off the road entirely if I saw one heading my way and turn off my engine and stop all electrical activity or RF emissions. I took this very seriously - it was easy to guess that the cargo carts and bunkers contained things that got very angry if poked.
The end use of my product was briefed to be for the 16" gun propellant packages in some otherwise unexplained way but described here at 3:00. Being prior military myself, I did not question the end use or application as I had no need to know. But now I know what I had a part of making. PS: The place was like a well manicured nature park, in fact there were some magnificent bucks wandering around. No hunting was allowed - obviously.
Today, I learned a lot about something I always wondered about! These videos and Mr. Ryan’s lectures are most enjoyable.
Ryan you are truly an amazing curator. It never ceases to amaze me how you are so descriptive and inclusive in all your presentations. I always lament missing some of them. I was wondering if you ever did one on the manufacturing of the powder bags or where they were manufactured and how. Thanks again you are a joy to us battleship lovers.
The largest charge I've fired was for the M107, 175mm Self Propelled Artillery gun, while in the USMC. The shell weighed 147 pounds and the maximum charge was 58 pounds of bagged powder with a range of 21 miles. The largest shell was from the M110A1, 8" Self Propelled Artillery gun. This shell weighed 200 pounds, but the powder charge was only 50 pounds with a range of 18 miles. Interesting side note, the M110 also had a nuclear shell available for use during the cold war. Our crew had a member that was certified to arm and handle the nuke, that was a special MOS 0812.
The M107 was classified as a gun and the M110 as a howitzer. It has to do with the ballistic profile the projectile travels. As you've noted, the 175mm was longer ranged with a lower weight projectile so it travelled on a flatter trajectory than the 8". The interesting time involving the propellant charges for both of those artillery pieces was disposing of unused charges after a session on the range. I did it once for each type of weapon at Grafenwoehr and the amount of heat generated when it burns is amazing. The red bags are placed at the end so they are the last ones to light off.
I'd heard about those 8 inch nuclear shells as a kid and was amazed at the small size.
@@beeber4516 there were two classes, that size was a gun type, similar to the Hiroshima bomb, albeit with more neutron reflectors. The larger round was a linear implosion, a cousin to the Nakasaki bomb, again with tons of reflectors to make it smaller.
Yeah, I used to work on nukes back in prehistory.
Wiki saith we built four dozen such nuclear shells for 16 inch guns.
Looks like they were a Pentagon political weapon -- the infighting over which service branch had which part of the nuclear triad.
This was however a weapon type in search of a mission... emptying an entire harbor at a shot? Making a new harbor, lickety-split? And all this at nuclear weapon prices and maintenance costs. The projectiles obsolesced and were dismantled.
I have shot many 1 to 1 1/4 pound loads of black powder charges though 2, 12 pound Napoleons and 3/4 to 1 pound loads though 2 different 6 pound civil war era guns, all cast in 1864 in Cincinnati, Ohio while a member of Battery A, 1st Ohio Light Artillery. It was an awesome unit to re-enact with from Columbus, Ohio.
Ryan, your presentation has come a long way!!!! that was/is an excellent explanation..
I was trying to explain grain size and the like to my son ( For my BP cannon) and ill have to admit you have done a better job than my attempt and so therefore his homework is - to watch this episode and then explain propellant grain fundamentals to me!!!! So thanks for helping Charlie boy understand in a way that I know will stick in his head. The whole reason we have kids I think, to teach them stuff!!!!!!! ( so we can then show them they have a long way to go to beat Dad!!!!!!!)
776uyù
Very well done.
I believe they did a shoot into Lebanon on morning news TV once. It was some distance away, the flash, boom reached the camera at different times. I was around middle teens by then.
Not much for shooting except a couple of confederate enfields in living history and a few artillery here and there but nothing that would hold up to this level of knowledge and precision present in this wonderful video.
I was told by a relative years ago that there was a battleship support off Korea and I have not been able to find much on it. Story goes the ship was shooting at 2000 yards enemy danger close from miles away. The description used by the relative was the sound of manifest high speed boxcar trains of that era rumbling over then the thump with a small pause before the kaboom.
Im not much personally, just a old trucker who will die one and frankly followed the artillery in all its forms most of my life and its very good to sit quietly with a coffee pot and soak in this information at this stage in my life.
The United States started off with I think DuPont up in the Brandywine Valley near Philly and worked out wards from there. I will share that I witnessed first hand a place near Hawthorne Nevada walker lake once or twice where theres a valley of about 20 miles by 40 if not bigger as the eye can see of storage bunkers maybe 600 yards apart. That at one time in WW2 was the stockpile for the entire Pacific.
Ive been told its since closed and no longer in use. So I am the last one to know anything more.
I will share that I have been into Remington Arms which is a small arms plant in Arkansas for delivery of Ready Mix Concrete that they would order at one time or another for a little bit here and a little bit there and so on. As they were actively making the powder or propellent in those woods back there I was taught one rule. Red Light stop and stay. Mr Red Light dictates that no one moves until its off for reasons. So... it was a small experience but memorable. Working for Dowdy in Batesville we eventually run Brass Coil Sheets into that plant on the front end docks to be made into small arms rounds. Those brass coils were loaded up in Buffalo NY across from Canada there. There was a foundry there.
Its alot of writing for a late night but little tidbits here and there and so on. Aberdeen Ordance Museum had at one time or another a 16 inch naval gun similar if not the same model as the Battleships. So standing in it's tub and consider dealing with it is something. Anzio Annie was something to compare it to. I think they moved it out long ago. Probably to Virginia.
I look forward to more of these wonderful videos.
just was reading about the explosion on the Iowa On 19 April 1989, due to a overram of powder bags ."The team determined that the "tare" or "trim" layer (a small amount of powder placed at the end of each bag to equalize the bag's weight, inserted in the mid-1980s when the powder was mixed and rebagged under Miceli's direction) would often ignite when compressed at high speed. Cooper found that the burning fragments did not ignite adjacent powder in the same bag, but instead would burn through the bag material and ignite the adjacent bag's black powder patch and thereby ignite the rest of the bags."
That makes sense, considering the what was heard. Also, the barges they came from apparently had A/C issues. Finally, when not encased in the barrel, those grains become burning shrapnel. Bodies were a mess. 😞
The perforations are to increase the burn rate of the powder. They increase surface area of the grain that is burning. You can tailor also design the perforations to generate a specific pressure curve, depending on the shape and locations of the perforations and how this develops as the propellant burns.
You really communicated your extensive knowledge of the subject well! Even I understood it.
Just a little tip from someone whose been in the film and video business for a long time... Get used to looking at the camera lens until you don't think of the glass but of the one guy who is hanging on every word you say. Treat the camera like somebody else just standing there chatting with you. You really need to practice this... it doesn't come easily sometimes, but if you can avoid glancing away from the camera, you'll appear more comfortable and natural.
Great work on this amazing ship! Thanks for a great channel!
It looked like they had two cameras going, and he didn't know which one was "live" half the time.
Relax.... for all you know he has taught himself to look around, as if when speaking to a group.
Crazy how precise they could be seeing as how factory ammunition in small arms vary in the 20s-30s fps for decent ammo.
Dracinifel discussed the efforts at remixing in a video once. The results were less than stellar. It resulted in charges that could vary by 30% from ombre shot to the next. Identical shots had effect variance of as much as 600 meters.
Imagine taking the same aim twice and missing the same spot by a quarter mile.
imagine being an infantryman being supported by such inaccurate artillery..
Man! Can you imagine the arms of these men who had to roll or try to pick these things up in a rapid pace during a fight? Must have been some really strong dogs back then. Respect!
Gotta lot of respect that you read the procedure for making nitrocellulose off a card. I'll take correct info over slick presentation any day.
Just to clarify though, the perforations in the powder grains allow for even burning after ignition. For example, if there were no perforations and the grain was ignited, the burning would take place over the entire external area of the grain alone releasing an initial amount of gas. As it burns away, however, the area of the cylinder becomes less reducing the amount of gas produced the longer it burns. The perforations provide for the grain to burn inward and outward at the same time so the perforations get wider as they burn just like the outer diameter gets smaller, creating a balanced burning. Generally, powder grains for weapons below 40mm have one perforation down the center while 16-inch gun propellant grains have seven as demonstrated in this video.
One ctiticism though, the internal pressure doesn't immediately start to go down as soon as the powder is ignited. The shell is moving down the barrel while the powder is still not all consumed. In fact, a consequence of priming the back of the rear bag means that as pressure is building unburned or still burning powder grains are being pushed up the barrel behind the shell. There is a point at which pressure begins to drop as gas generation can't keep up with the volume of the barrel behind the shell, but it's not immediate. You can find out more about this subject in the 1957 Naval Ordnance and Gunnery Volume I, Chapter 6, Section C _Gun Barrels and Interior Ballistics_ eugeneleeslover.com/US-NAVY-BOOKS/1-NO-10797-A-CHAPTER-6.html
As a teenager (in 1963) I owned and shot a vintage flintlock Charleville musket. I loaded a .64" round ball (+-450 grains) over 190 grains of FFg and each time wondered why I was doing that?? The only recoil mitigation system was my shoulder and it didn't work that well... Thanks for the very detailed description of how the grains were laid in the bag, I would have had not idea! Your videos are always informative and engaging.
In 1967 my next door neighbor would buy 50lb kegs of surplus 20MM powder. He used it for handloading many popular rifle calibers. 3006, 243, 220 swift etc... It would shoot fantastic groups at a few dollars per pound!!
Now _that's_ a keg party!
Great video. Always enjoy the content. My wife is a museum professional, so I can relate to a lot of the issues you face. Keep up the excellent work.
I bet you could 3D print some inert grains of propellant and sell them in the gift shop. Unique and probably inexpensive souvenir.
I'll take 10!!! What a cool idea
Or go old school and use the Play-Doh extruder he mentioned. Could use old dog turds picked up in the park for the material. Put a coat of shellac on them to keep the stink down and get them on the shelves.
@@jeremyperala839 They could polish them, too, I suspect.
Dude you are a beacon of freedom in these dark days, thank you!!!
In reading about Iowa class battleships, the literature often mentions "dumped" versus "stacked". I think you explained that the practice rounds were "dumped" while the service rounds were "stacked". The books seemed to have extensive tables of "dumped" and "stacked" with associated ranges and muzzle velocities leading me to believe there were multiple uses for these two terms. So the "dumped" grains are just randomly oriented in a bag, while the "stacked" are aligned end to end. Am I understanding this correctly?
Those holes in the grains do more than ensuring an even burn, they actually cause the powder to burn at an accelerating rate as the projectile gets further down the barrel....in doing so, the pressure in the barrel doesn't drop off as fast as it otherwise would.
If the grains didn't have holes, then as the powder burns inward the burning surface area decreases causing a drop in gas release. By putting a single hole in the center, as the outside rate decreases the inside increases and the gas release remains constant. By putting many holes in it, the area inside which is burning increases much faster than the outside decreases, so the burn rate accelerates.
One of my favorite channels, I know your busy but I'd love more recess and void space exploration!
We've got one coming up on monday!
@@BattleshipNewJersey AWESOME!!! Cant wait!!
This was an extremely interesting and informative presentation that got right to the point and covered most of the technical questions. Excellent.
Holy cow, you guys are at 61k subs now, you had like 30k a few months ago. I swear I remember seeing like 25k on your channel.
Another good video. Had a nice talk with a veteran who served in the USS Iowa during the Korean War.
Love what y'all are doing, don't worry so much about the note card, I need one to spell my name some days.
As a precision rifle shooter +/- 5fps is AMAZING. I would have assumed 100fps but thats amazingly tight quality control for the guns/primers/shells/powder
I remember watching another RUclips video on how this stuff was made.
The propellant gets extruded in the final step of the process and looks a lot like Tootsie Rolls (except that eating one would definitely be contraindicated).
Well there goes those plans!
@hognoxious Correct. Interesting trivia...pool balls were made with nitrocellulose starting in 1869. They switched to Bakelite in 1907 because the billiard balls occasionally blew up.
In the early to mid 80s I remember these shells and powder charges coming through NWS Charleston for S&I. Train car after train car. I was absolutely amazed at the size of these shells and charges.
I know that things don't work this way, but I keep thinking about a low boy trailer carrying a set of Hornady reloading dies, a box car load of Sierra ballistic tip bullets (and the fork lift to move them) and a dump truck full of Hogdon powder. As usual, everybody will be out of stock on the super large super magnum rile primers.
The rifle primers would be about an inch across....lol
In the turrets, there's a primer man with the specific job of putting the electrically fired primer in the back of the charge before the breech is closed. I understand his station is in the breech space just far enough that the big gun's recoil doesn't reach him.
These turrets aren't a big armoed box with gun breeches sticking into them, but divided up into numerous small compartments. Wriggling from one to another is like exploring a cave. Each gun breech has such a space. The largest interior space is the back of the turret where the local-control optical rangefinder lives.
The turret explosion in USS Iowa was during a 5 bag D-846 w/2600lb practice shell experiment. Everything I have read said it was not officially sanctioned by NAVSEA.
I love this channel. This delves so deep into the inter workings of these old warships. Soooo coool!
Fantastic job, Ryan. Your videos seem to get better and better. Keep doing what you're doing.
Biggest charge you ask? 48 grains of IMR 4064 in a 30-06. Somehow, I suspect one could load a few dozen 30-06 size cartridges with the weight of just one grain from those 16" / 50 charges.
When I was in the Navy, the two ships I was on, a destroyer and a frigate, we had 5 inch guns. I used to love the gun shoots!
Extrusion is the technical term when you’re pushing material through a die.
Would it be considered a die or a mold?
@@jeremyperala839 a die can be open ended, a mold encloses the material.iirc
I am glad to see these videos are getting good amount of views and that they continue to be made. This type of history shouldnt be lost to time.
Biggest charge I've ever personally fired is M2/M33 ball .50BMG from a ship-mounted Browning M2 machine gun. Nothing that special, though it *is* a *lot* of fun.
As a Marine Corps machine gunner in the early 80's, the M2 along with the MK19 were my daily toys.
As you said, they are not to be compared to the 16" guns, but they still have their place to this date and they still mean business. And yes, they are a hoot to shoot!
I had 2 bolt action target rifles in .50BMG. 1 in 16 barrel twist for both, 30mm Nightforce scopes, Badger 12 bolt scope rings. These were a lot of fun to shoot and to let others including kids to shoot. I hand loaded a thousand plus rounds of fire formed brass, precision primer pockets, special projectiles for 1000 yard use. The muzzle brakes cut the recoil to less than a 12 gage. I fired about 5 rounds out of a 20mm Lahti and that recoil was considerable. Now I do indoor .177 air rifles.
Wow! What a fascinating, satisfying presentation. Thanks for this treat.
I was a Quartermaster in the Navy in the late 90's. I'd like to see a video on the Chart room.
hey, forgive me my (first hand) knowledge of the Navy (and armed forces in general) is severely lacking, but the documentaries I've seen, laaaargely pertaining to the 1800s and before it seems, a "Quartermaster" is someone that worries about supplies and ensuring the troops have all the clothing and rations and weapons and so on that they need... is the term simply used differently in land forces? Thanks so much for your answer.
In the navy a quartermaster is the primary navigator.
@@ScumfuckMcDoucheface In the Navy a Quartermaster is an Enlisted navigator. I used to work with Charts, GPS, and Radar. I believe in the Army a "Quartermaster" works in Supply.
I was a Field Artillery Officer in the 90’s and worked primarily on 155mm self propelled howitzers, that is with a tank track vehicle supporting the gun tube. Our ammo was two part, the shells came in a variety of flavors on pallets stacked two high. (High explosive, smoke, DPICM,mines, rocket assist, chemical & white phosphorus). They weighed about 95lb each, just enough that you really had to be very careful, plenty of guys had busted fingers and toes. The powder came in a vacuum sealed tube, 5 increments per tube, each of the bags were sewn together with stringy thread, day to day the powder increments would change color some, I’ve seen them be all white, pale tan & light green. Each of the powder bags different sizes with the largest bag being charge 5, that end go in the breech first. After the projectile. The range on a 155mm was about 19km or 11.8 miles, so in peacetime we would tear off two bags to shoot charge three out to 10km or so. We had a Litton computer called BUCS that allowed the fire direction officer to input powder temp, meteorological data, air temp, altitude at target, the precise 10 digit grids for the observer, canon & target, fusing requested, etc. It would spit out slightly different azimuth & elevation for each gun and could land the rounds in the same square meter, or a square or a circle or what have you. So someone at each gun would set fuses, projectile goes in the breech, the desired powder increments & the breech is shut, gun chief attaches the firing mechanism and a lanyard, and pulls it. Fire direction calls “shot over” to the observer. The gun tube will recoil as much as 55” and it’s awful loud, even through a Kevlar and earplugs, you can feel the concussion and you have to leave your mouth open or you’ll rupture your eardrums. I don’t recall the muzzle velocity but if you don’t blink you get a glimpse of a round departing if you’re standing outside. 15-30 seconds later you get impact or splash. Even 7-9000m away the explosions are pretty impressive.
The pressure peaks and then doesn't drop until the shell leaves the barrel. There is propellant burning the entire time even after the shell leaves the barrel. Thats why there is a large fireball that leaves the gun. Propellant is still burning in the open air. Also the shorter barrel doesnt increase the speed of the shell. The shorter barrels needed a faster burning propellant because it has a shorter amount of time to build pressure while the shell was still in the barrel. A perfect load has its charge fully burnt right ass the shell leaves the barrel. If you burn up to fast you will get a slower round speed also if you burn to slow youll throw some of your load out and get a slower round.
The Royal Navy switched to Cordite N a triple base propellant in WWII by adding Nitroguanidine to Cordite, this reduce muzzle flash and increased barrel life by lowering the temperature of the shot due to the massive amout on nitrogen produce by the Nitroguanidine when heated, some modern artillery still uses this triple base propellant
I read that Yamato’s gun barrels were only rated for about 100 full-charge shots. Every time it shot its guns in anger, it cost 1% of the ship’s useful life.
Barrel, not ship.
You can switch barrels withouth throwing the whole ship away. They were not made by Apple.
@@Wyrmnax Well, I found another site that says barrel life 150-250 rounds, but one of the barrels of Musashi may have been rendered inoperative firing a san-shiki anti-aircraft shell on the day it sunk, so there is nothing precise in those figures. Now, what happens at the end of your barrel life? The barrels of the Yamato-class could not be relined. Only 27 guns were commissioned. 9 were installed on Musashi, 9 on Yamato, two were test guns, and 7 more were earmarked for the Shinano but were never completed. A ship like Yamato might have had a nominal 25 mile range on its guns, but it's chance of hitting a maneuvering target over half that distance was less than 1%, at maximum range, probably less than .1%. An American battleship staying inside the range of its radar-directed gunfire but outside of the range where Yamato's gunfire would have a high-enough hitting position to justify the decrease in barrel life could goad the the Yamato into effectively destroying its own combat effectiveness. At the same tonnage as the Yamato, the US could add two cruisers, say a Brooklyn and a Baltimore class. As soon as Yamato concentrates fire on Iowa, Brooklyn and Baltimore advance. When Yamato deems them a threat and engages a cruiser with the main battery, that cruiser makes smoke and withdraws. The cruisers could easily get within the range of their radar-directed guns, and they could start making mincemeat out of Yamato's upper-deck works. www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNJAP_18-45_t94.php
@hognoxious You can change the barrels if there are any, but making barrels for guns this big was really the artistic and highly technical part of the job. They are expensive, and Japan didn't make extras.
Another great vid. The biggest charges I have set off would be 440 grain hardcast projectiles from a S & W 500 as well as some 2 barrel blasts of bird loads from the old SxS 10 gauge.
I was a bit surprised they used silk for the bags. I thought silk was in short supply in WW2. Presumably silk must offer some advantage to be used rather than something cheap like cotton canvas. I wonder what the advantage is?
I would imagine it was in short supply to consumers because the War Department bought it and used it for powder bags and parachutes, not undies and bed sheets.
@@cliffaksw Yeah, silk leaves very little smoldering residue. Rayon and some wools leave more. Cotton leaves a _lot_. Even though the barrel is blown out before the breech is opened, and the gun captain is supposed to stick his head in an visually inspect before loading, it's not something you want around when shoving bags of propellant into the breech.
Learned a lot from this video, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised; giant rifles need giant grains of propellant. The additives to extend barrel life was very cool, I had no idea such a thing even existed. Fascinating! Cheers to you all.
I didn't realize the grains were so big. I've seen the grains used in common rifle cartridges such as .223 or .30-'06 and they look pretty similar except they are tiny. A 2" long grain, yikes!
When reloading rifle ammo grains are weight granules or kernels are the size you always go by weight for reloading same for shot shells!!
In my old Field Artillery days, we fired 155mm howitzers (M114 and M198) with both white and green bag charges. I think the green bag weighed about 5-6 pounds and white bag around 13-15 pounds. I never got to mess with the supercharges they came up after I left the FA in mid-1980s.
I have a question, how do you flood a ships powder magazine, I know a lot of ships would do so if they had revived a hit and did not want to risk a magazine explosion, what did that entail? Is it just automatically spraying down the powder bag storage or is the magazine literally filled with water?
Usually, the magazine will have a high-pressure sprinkler system as well as an intake that allows sea water to enter the magazine when activated. Remember most of the propellant is stored in water-tight, air-tight canisters and only a few canisters were opened at one. time. The high-pressure sprinklers should contain most of the fire and cool it down sufficiently that the propellant in the canisters won't ignite before the water coming in from the sea water intake completely floods the compartment.
I came across an excerpt from an USN manual on Stowage and Supply of Ammunition from 1917 states that either system should be capable of flooding the magazine within 20 minutes: www.gwpda.org/naval/w04usams.htm
@@Bob_Betker hey thanks for the info
The Biggest charge I have ever fired was 45 grains of 4895 IMR powder made by Dupont back in 1968....30.06 round in a US Model of 1917 Rifle....cheers Ryan.....always love your presentation
71.5 gr of H4831 out of my 300 Win Mag is the largest amount of powder that I personally have used , the scale size of each grain of powder is amazing ! I thought it would be same size as rifle powder , just a Helluva lot more ! I was WRONG ! 😳
That was going to be my answer.
This is the same reason why powder for small arms comes in different grain sizes as well.
For a technical explanation of the Iowa explosion in turret # 2 I recommend reading the book " Explosion aboard the Iowa " by Dr. Richard L. Schwoebel of Sandia National Laboratories . He and his team were hired by the Senate Armed Services Committee to investigate the incident of April 19, 1989 on the Iowa.
“A Glimpse of Hell” is also a good book about the incident. Names all the players and all the nonsense that was going on, as well as the Navy’s refusal to believe the truth. A movie version of the book came out starring James Caan.
Thanks for the info about these battleships.,I toured the USS New Jersey back in 3010 which i
Drachinifel has an interview with the captain of the Iowa. In it he talks about exactly how accurate they got. They could put every shell on the grass of a soccer field.
At a range of 20 miles.
@@mopardoctor9966 I forgot to mention that. Yeah, it's crazy.
9 16” HE shells landing in the soccer field could ruin any grounds keeper’s day.
Honestly, I’d have thought it would be more accurate than that. I guess that’s why we use missiles these days though, you can get a guided missile through the window of a building.
@leftnoname, more like put them out of a job.
As a hand loader "grain" is a unit of weight equal to 1/7000th of a pound (or 15.432 grains per gram) used for measuring powder charge and bullet weight. I can't imagine grains, as a unit of measure, would ever be used for a gun of such scale. However, it still sounds, to my hand loader ears, wrong to use "grain" in that way. (Yes I'm aware of grains of salt, grains of sand and grains of sugar but we don't measure those things in grains as well like we do with powder and bullets) Iwould call each individual piece of smokeless powder a kernel. As far as I'm aware "kernal" is not also a unit if measure.
Love the channel! Lots of interesting stuff.
Various propellants, from black powder, on, have both been _weighed_ in grains (at least, smaller charges) and been manufactured in discrete _grains_ (kernels) that were then poured into a bag or cartridge. I agree it can be a bit confusing (see also "caliber").
Yay! More gun stuff!
Hey Ryan, largest charge that I have fired is a 10lb charge out of a 7in Brooke Rifle. Thanks for the video it was very good, keep them rolling.
I remember the Navy smearing & scape-goating Clayton Hartwig after the 1989 USS Iowa accident.
Same here. One of my cousins was in ordnance at the time. Two problems: the old powder was deteriorated and more sensitive. Because of that more care had to be taken when inserting the bags into the barrel. In the Iowa accident its believed the powder bags were rammed too fast and too hard.
Yeh, it was a truly scummy thing the Navy brass did trying to cover up the real cause of the explosion. Scuttlebutt had it that the Iowa officers were trying to do a rate of fire that was unwise with old powder. Navy brass must always find a scapegoat, its a time honored tradition.
I wonder if the navy is currently doing the same thing to the sailor they’re saying burned down the Bonhomme Richard. I’ve heard the evidence against him isn’t very convincing
I’ve begun to wonder why Ryan avoids this topic so seriously? Across several videos where the topic would organically likely come up, he….alludes to it…..but has never really tackled it head on. I suspect it’s part of the Navy agreement. If so, understandable…..but also very unfortunate. That is a story very worthy of being told. Still, great channel Ryan and thanks for efforts!
We have done a video on it, ruclips.net/video/8D6v48cXvRo/видео.html
@@BattleshipNewJersey thanks for the reply. Surprised I had missed that one (and did enjoy it) but…..my original point still stands. The accident itself is known about but the story surrounding the event is something still avoided here. I don’t mean it as a criticism per se, just an observation. I understand that it can be a sensitive topic but I also believe that a lot of hard lessons should have been learned, at least I hope so, and that the navy will be better off for it no matter how many lumps they need to take.
I was on the shell deck of Turret 3, so technically, the most I've ever fired was probably the 330 lb charge. The higher charges were mostly right out of service by the plankowners. Apparently, there was a firing of a 5-charge of D-846 and one D845 and got some more range (and a thorough chewing out of Seaquist by the Navy), but that was before my time and not my turret.
Buff HE! Nerf Concealment of DD's!
AP should cause flooding on DDs
I love these kinds of details. I have always had a love for the technology put into large naval guns.
The navy should have kept the battleship and used rocket propelled shells.
haha hell Yeah, can you imagine? The way troops describe the sound of shells flying overhead already as "freight train like"... just throw a rocket on the end of one... and then...? haha
@@ScumfuckMcDoucheface it would be like the M982 artillery shell. It’s just rocket assisted on the beginning stage before it leaves the barrel. It should sound the same just a whole lot faster.
@@brianalford5754 i dont know the designation you're refferencing but I've heard of rocket assisted shells (and dropped bomb) that use the rocket to navigate and target select well off the gravity assisted ballistic trajectory... totally awesome, for sure.
Hard on the barrels
There have been a number of rocket-assisted shells designed and even used, from WWII onward. They light off at some point _after_ leaving the muzzle. Two big problems: 1) if the shell isn't perfectly aligned when the motor lights (e.g., some wobble) accuracy goes all to hell, and 2) the rocket propellant etc. reduces the amount of bursting charge the shell can carry (more or less fixed volume).
Love the Battleship New Jersey .. The last few years my motorcycle club, in conjunction with Fallen Hero Wreath Program, has ended the day there after completing our run. I'll never get tired of turing this ship ...